Largest Carolina Cities 1790-1960

[krazeeboi]

I tend to agree with Unifour. When the individual designations of urban areas begin looking arbitrary as they do in the Northeast megalopolis cities or the Bay Area in California, then I think we can start complaining. As is, Carolina cities are still pretty much independent of each other in terms of UA, even in the multinodal metros. That is starting to change however.

[Spartan]

I tend to agree with Unifour. When the individual designations of urban areas begin looking arbitrary as they do in the Northeast megalopolis cities or the Bay Area in California, then I think we can start complaining. As is, Carolina cities are still pretty much independent of each other in terms of UA, even in the multinodal metros. That is starting to change however.

True. And in addition to that, if you read the SC forum at all, our number one complaint is that the annexation laws in our state prevent our cities from maintaining populations stats that accurately reflect their size. The most common example is Greenville, SC, which has a city population of around 56,000 according to the Census 2000. Its urban area is significantly larger at around 302,000. Spartanburg is in a similar situation. The city has about 39,000 people, but its urbanized area is 145,000. Cities like Mount Pleasant and Rock Hill rank higher on the city population lists than Greenville, SC and Spartanburg respectively, when in reality these places are not. The urban area stats are certainly not flawless, but they provide a more accurate representation of the size of cities when compared to each other, and more importantly to other states. North Carolina has superior annexation laws compared to South Carolina, making it easier to annex. So if you compare SC cities to NC cities, they will appear much smaller when in reality they may not.

There are flaws to this. One major urban area flaw is also in Greenville, SC. Greenville and Mauldin-Simpsonville are infact the same area, so they should in reality be one urban area of 380,000 or so. Developments in that area are such that they will most likely become one urban area after the next census. But like I said before, the urban area is a good way to compare the cities as it is the only statistic that is not confined to artificial political boundaries (like City, County, MSA, CSA, etc. population are).

[Beany]

The point is no single number paints an accurate picture. It is good to look at a number of numbers.

Here's an interesting link listing U.S. urban areas. I like this list because it does show the land area and population densities of the urban areas.

http://www.demographia.com/db-ua2000all.htm

[davidals]

Some history on Charlotte. It's not all banking.

Charlotte itself while having few mills was not itself a big textile producer. It was however the trading and distribution center for the textile industry which is one of the reasons it grew as it did during the from the 1900s on. And while the finance industry has been important in Charlotte, people on these boards don't realize this area has more manufacturing jobs than banking jobs, and this area is also the 6th largest distribution area in the entire USA (right after Chicago).

...

Charlotte's success isn't just banking.

[wsncfay]

yeah, i was looking at fayetteville, was there for many decades, then just falls out of sight until just the recent decades, i was born in the 80s and it was at about 75,000 people, and now as of 2005 its at 174,000 and adding more shortly

[RiverwoodCLT]

There is more in Charlotte than banking . It is also a good location. Charlotte is one of the nation's major transportation centers and the distribution hub for the fifth largest urban region in the United States.